The human brain cannot easily cope with very high levels of power. Why?

We’ve all met him. He breezes into the room, charisma charging the air around him. He smiles and jokes to one of his favourites, who blushes and simpers in response. A would-be lieutenant at the end of the table tries to flaunt a boys-together intimacy with the boss via a stagey and knowing guffaw. How is everyone? the snappily dressed boss booms, not waiting for an answer because, honestly, that’s not a priority for him. He begins with a few more jokey exchanges with those who have surrendered to him psychologically – either through awe or cowed submission. The man has a feral capacity to sniff out those around the table who haven’t succumbed – the ones with lowered eyes and wooden faces. There is a predator-like stiffening as they catch his attention. He says something curt or cold or a jokey put-down. He relishes the challenge of bringing them under his psychological control by metaphorical seduction – or by fear and brute force. Last week Gianni Infantino showed the door to Kevin Lamour, chief operating officer of Fifa, because his deputy had dared to criticise his boss’s abortive attempt to privatise part of the World Cup. READ MOREInfantino hatched his shocking plan with financiers JP Morgan and people in the Trump circle, including the Kushner family. Most of his most senior executives in Fifa said they didn’t know about it, but they were careful not to criticise their boss because speaking truth to power is a dangerous business if you want to stay in your lavishly paid, perks-filled job. Infantino instead relied on a very small inner circle of handpicked acolytes to advance his plan in spite of the obvious-to-others red flags that eventually brought the whole scheme down. One of these, reportedly, was a Dubliner, Dan O’Toole, chief of staff at Fifa, who is still in the post. Humans are driven by three basic motivations: to be accepted by others (affiliation); to accomplish (achievement); and to control (power/autonomy). Each has a corresponding fear: rejection, failure and loss of control respectively. We each have these drives in different combinations. Research suggests that men and women who need power/control more than they need to be liked by others, make better managers. Anyone who has had a boss who tried to be liked by everyone will recognise this. People with a higher need to call the shots will naturally gravitate to roles where they orchestrate the work or activities of other people. Leadership is stressful – and having power over others reduces that stress by increasing testosterone (in both men and women), which in turn boosts dopamine activity in the brain, lifting mood and lowering anxiety. [ Gianni Infantino’s opponents developing new framework for running world footballOpens in new window ]The last thing you want in a boss is someone with a very low appetite for getting things done by controlling what happens. That person will end up too stressed and will focus instead either on being a team-busting people-pleaser or on chasing personal accomplishments that are tangential to the group’s interests. But here is a problem. Power gives you confidence. Confidence gives you status. Status makes you persuasive. This triad – power, confidence and status – is a sure-fire recipe for success. Not only one success but exponentially growing successes caused by power growing, confidence swelling and status escalating to charismatic levels. The great English philosopher Bertrand Russell said that power is to human relationships what energy is to physics. And like nuclear energy, human power can have either wonderful or catastrophic effects.Because the power triad is so potent, it can propel the power-holder to great heights of achievement, influence and wealth – as we saw so clearly in Infantino’s private jet criss-crossing the United States so he could attend every game at the World Cup as if he were the president of a superpower rather than a football association. Not to mention his six-million annual remuneration package, of courseThe human brain cannot easily cope with very high levels of power. Why? Because having control over what thousands or millions of people want, need or fear is a heady neurochemical intoxicant that can, unless checked, unbalance brain function via the testosterone and dopamine systems. This has distressingly predictable effects: narcissism; loss of empathy; poor judgment; low risk perception; manipulation of others; confusion of personal and organisational interests; use of the ‘royal we’; hypocrisy (rules are for the little people, not for me); unethical behaviour; unquenchable appetite for ever more power. [ Uefa poised to lift boycott threat after Fifa promises no World Cup sale repeatOpens in new window ]There are only two known ways of preventing this happening to a person who holds a lot of power. The first is by only giving power to individuals who have a strong set of internal moral or ethical constraints. You can detect such people by the modest but not overwhelming appearance in their free speech of words like ‘not’, ‘shouldn’t’, ‘can’t’ or ‘don’t’. You don’t hear these much on the rare occasions Infantino deigns to speak to the press. Of course, such potential leaders must have a healthy appetite for power but they must also have, if they are to be protected from power-brain-disruption, the sense that there is something bigger than them, whether that’s the law, a principle or a set of values. I doubt the Fifa president feels himself constrained by anything that is bigger than his ego. The second way of curbing the curse of power is by external constraints. Hence the human genius inventions of democracy, a free press, an independent judiciary, constitutions and so on. And that’s why the first act of a would-be dictator is almost always to dismantle these tiresome constraints on his power, as, for example, Vladimir Putin has done in Russia and Donald Trump has been trying to do in the US. Infantino’s offer of up to $40 million to football associations who signed up to his privatisation plan by September 19th was an example of how he manipulates the global governance structures of Fifa to free himself of petty external constraints on his actions. We all create our own realities to some extent, shaped by whom we choose to mix with and what we read and hear, and media algorithms have accelerated this process. But great power – political, celebrity or financial – can seal us into our reality capsule more completely than any social media feed. This is a Trump-world reality where anything you don’t want to hear is ‘fake news’ and the truth is what the most powerful person says it is. Infantino and his cabal created their own distorted reality, their attention so focused on vast wealth and power that they blinded themselves to the fact that there are more noble values and realities clinging on in this wonderful global sport. Ian Robertson is emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin and author of How Confidence Works and The Winner Effect